Tekmetric alternatives: an honest look for independent shops

Tekmetric is a well-established cloud shop system. It includes unlimited users, there’s no long-term contract, and it publishes its prices, which plenty of shop software doesn’t. Shops still go looking for alternatives, and it’s usually for one of three reasons. The first is price: according to Tekmetric’s own pricing page, two-way texting sits on the $439 Scale plan and integrated payments on Enterprise. The second is wanting AI built into the counter. The third is wanting a free trial instead of a demo.

Full disclosure: we make Gearboxly, one of the options below. We’ve tried to be fair to everyone, including Tekmetric, and every price on this page comes from public pages, checked October 10, 2026. Jump to the comparison table.

What to compare before you switch

Switching shop software is a big job, so it pays to compare the things that actually change your monthly bill and your service writer’s day. Here’s what we’d check, and what to ask on every demo.

What the plan you actually need costs

Don’t compare entry plans. Compare the plan that has everything you’d use on a normal Tuesday: two-way texting, card payments and a labor guide. That’s often two or three tiers up. For example, on Tekmetric, two-way texting is on the Scale plan ($439/mo billed monthly, checked October 10, 2026), and the labor guide starts on Grow ($349/mo). Write your must-haves on one line, then ask each vendor which plan covers all of them and what it costs per month, billed monthly. If a demo answer starts with “that’s an add-on,” ask for the add-on price in writing.

Per-user fees

Count everyone who’d log in: service writers, techs, the owner and the person who does the books. Shopmonkey includes 3, 4 or 5 users depending on the plan, then charges $20/month for each extra user (checked October 10, 2026). Tekmetric and Gearboxly include unlimited users. Per-user pricing can be fine for a small team, but it adds up when you want every tech on their phone, logging time and inspection photos. Ask what happens when you hire, and whether techs count as users.

Contracts, setup and migration fees

The monthly price isn’t the whole cost of switching. AutoLeap says there’s a one-time setup fee. Shopmonkey lists a one-time $500 data migration fee. Gearboxly is month to month, with CSV import and no setup fee. Tekmetric says no contract. For anyone else, ask directly: is there a contract, how long is it, what does setup cost, and what does it cost to bring your customer and vehicle history over? Get the answers in writing before you sign anything.

Texting and payments: included or extra?

Texting and card payments are where shops feel the difference every day. Customers approve faster from a text, and paying from a link saves your writer a phone call. Check two things: which plan includes them, and what you pay per use. On Tekmetric, two-way texting is on Scale and integrated payments are on Enterprise. Shopmonkey and Gearboxly include both on the entry plan. Gearboxly includes 1,000 text segments per location per month (3,000 on Growth) and adds no fee of its own on top of Stripe’s standard card fee.

Will AI actually save your service writer time?

“AI” is on a lot of feature lists now. Ask what it actually does at the counter: does it draft the estimate from the concern, look up labor, write inspection notes? Ask where its labor times come from, and whether it labels its guesses so your writer knows what to check. A tool that quietly fills in numbers you can’t trace is a liability, not a time saver. Gearboxly labels every AI labor time on the repair order and keeps everything the AI writes as a draft until a person approves it.

Gearboxly: the alternative we built

Gearboxly wasn’t built in an office. It was built inside Auto Star, a working repair shop that still runs on it every day, and more than 1,500 repair orders have been written in it. You can read the story on our about page.

Pricing is per location: Core is $99/mo, AI is $249/mo for one location ($219 each for 2 to 4), and Growth is $399/mo ($369 each for 2 to 4). Yearly billing is 12 months for the price of 10. Every plan is month to month, you can cancel any time, and every plan includes unlimited users. Every shop starts with a 14-day trial of the AI plan, with no card. See pricing.

Core includes repair orders, digital inspections, estimates with text-to-approve, two-way texting (1,000 text segments per location per month; 3,000 on Growth), scheduling and online booking, invoices and Stripe card payments with no extra Gearboxly fee (Stripe’s standard fee applies), and a customer portal.

The AI plan adds AI labor lookup, estimate drafts, inspection-to-estimate, Shop Brain and deferred-work follow-ups. Every AI labor time is labeled on the RO, and AI output stays a draft until a person approves it.

The honest limits: Gearboxly is new. QuickBooks Online sync and the iPhone and Android staff app are marked “Soon” on our pricing, and Dejavoo card terminals are coming soon. If you need those today, wait for them or pick another option. For a head-to-head, see Gearboxly vs Tekmetric, or, if you’re deciding between the big two, Tekmetric vs Shopmonkey vs Gearboxly.

The other Tekmetric alternatives

Shopmonkey

Shopmonkey is a mature, polished all-in-one shop system. Its published pricing (checked October 10, 2026) is Basic at $239/mo billed monthly ($215 billed yearly), Clever at $399 ($359), Genius at $499 ($449), and custom pricing for Multi-Shop. Texting, payments, parts lookup and a mobile app are on every plan, including Basic, which makes the entry plan more complete than many. The trade-off is users: plans include 3, 4 or 5 users, then $20/month for each extra, so count your team before you compare. There’s also a one-time $500 data migration fee to budget for. If your crew is small and you want a proven tool with texting and payments from day one, Shopmonkey is worth a look. Our Gearboxly vs Shopmonkey page goes line by line.

AutoLeap

AutoLeap publishes four tiers (checked October 10, 2026): Essentials at $199/mo billed monthly ($179 billed annually), Pro at $349 ($309), Elite at $449 ($409), and Enterprise at custom pricing. There’s a one-time setup fee, and there’s no free trial: AutoLeap’s pricing page says it custom-builds the system for each shop, so you’ll go through a demo instead. That approach suits shops that want someone to set things up with them rather than figure it out alone. On the demo, ask what the setup fee is, what’s included in it, whether there’s a contract and for how long, and which tier includes texting, payments and a labor guide. Then price that tier, not Essentials.

Shop-Ware

Shop-Ware is known for the customer-facing inspection experience, which is why it tends to come up with higher-volume and specialty shops. Its own site didn’t show a public price when we checked. Third-party listings put the Startup plan at $279/mo, but we couldn’t verify that, so treat it as unverified and ask Shop-Ware for a written quote. As with any quote-based tool, ask which features are on the plan you’re quoted, what’s an add-on, whether there’s a contract or setup fee, and how many users are included. If the customer’s inspection view is what sells your work, put it side by side with the others on a real vehicle during the demo.

Mitchell 1 Manager SE

Mitchell 1 is best known for repair information, and that’s its strength. Manager SE, its shop management system, doesn’t have published pricing; it’s sold by quote. If your techs already live in Mitchell 1 repair information, staying in that ecosystem can make sense. Ask for a written quote that lists every add-on you’d need, including texting, payments, digital inspections and extra users, so you can compare the full monthly cost. See Gearboxly vs Mitchell 1 for the side-by-side.

Budget and newer options

Lower-cost tools exist too. For example, ARI lists plans from $39.99/mo on its own site (we haven’t verified that). Budget tools often cover fewer workflows, so check digital inspections, two-way texting and card payments before you assume a low price is a like-for-like swap.

When Tekmetric is the better fit

Tekmetric is a good product, and switching costs real time. Stay if any of these sound like you:

• You need a large integration catalog. Tekmetric’s ecosystem is broad.
• You run multiple shops and want mature multi-shop tooling. Tekmetric sells a multi-shop add-on (+$70/month per shop on its pricing page).
• Your team already knows it, and the switching cost outweighs the savings.
• You want an established vendor with a long track record. Gearboxly is new.

If that’s you, stay. If price, per-plan texting and payments, or AI at the counter are the issue, try the alternatives on your own repair orders.

How to switch without losing a week

Start by exporting your customers, vehicles and repair history as CSV files, and keep the old system readable for a month so you can look things up. Run a trial on real repair orders, not demo data: write a few estimates, send a few texts and take a payment. Before you go live, set your labor rate and parts matrix first, because every estimate depends on them. Our effective labor rate calculator and parts markup calculator help, and the getting started guide walks through setup. For the bigger picture, read What to look for in shop management software.